1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates in general to a method and a module for power detection and a peripheral apparatus using the same, and more particularly to a method and a module for determining whether a power signal has sufficient driving power and a peripheral apparatus using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A portable information processing apparatus, such as a notebook computer, usually has the characteristics of light weight and small volume for the user's convenience of carrying it. Thus, in order to further reduce the volume and weight of the notebook computers, some of these notebook computers, the mini notebook computers especially, have no longer equipped with certain input/output devices, such as the optical disc drive (ODD). Such a notebook computer may utilize an external ODD, such as an external slim ODD, provided by certain manufacturers to access an optical disc. Besides, the manufacturers also provide an external device, such as an external hard drive, which has mass storage space and is convenient to carry.
Making use of the above-mentioned external device conventionally requires an additional power device, such as an AC adaptor, to provide sufficient power. Nevertheless, some external devices now may adopt another manner for receiving power through some data communication interfaces that not only transfer data but also provide power. For example, the universal serial bus (USB) defines an interface with the power at a voltage of about 5 V and a current of about 0.5 A. Hence, the current external hard drives can utilize the power obtained through the USB transmission line as well as communicate with a computer so that an additional AC adaptor becomes unnecessary.
However, some external devices with higher power consumption, such as the ODD, may need to draw a current higher than 0.5 A, such as a current of 0.6 to 0.9 A. In this case, if the USB transmission line is used to provide the external ODD with power directly, it may be unable to ensure that the external ODD can operate stably and normally. It is thus evident that the way of directly providing power by using the USB transmission line may risk the data on unstable access, and is not suitable for different types of external devices, especially those with higher power consumption. If such way of providing power is applied to an external ODD, the user may suffer from the risk of unstable data access, which may cause the user lose data unexpectedly, or degrade the system operation as a whole.